The GOP is convinced that the Affordable Care Act will remain a winning political issue for them. On Meet the Press Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said be the “biggest issue” in the next congressional election. From Meet the Press:

SEN. MCCONNELL: You know, I don’t know what the issues will be next year. If I were predicting what’s likely to be the biggest issue in the 2014 election, I think it would be Obamacare. I think it’s coming back big time. And by the way, the IRS has a role to play in the implementation of Obamacare, which is another reason why if we had the opportunity to do it, we ought to pull it out root and branch, the single worst piece of legislation that’s been passed in modern times in this country. And the American people are beginning to learn as their premiums go up, as jobs are lost, the full effect of this on our slow growth economy has been enormous. I– I think that’s likely, frankly, David, to be the biggest issue next– in 2014 and maybe others.

This answer comes right after the House Republicans decided to dedicate a day staging another repeal vote just to get every new member on record. Republicans are convinced that campaigning against the ACA will help them replicate their success in 2010. Republicans have gone all in on this political bet.

For this strategy to work the implementation of the law needs to go very badly, which gives Republicans at all levels a strong incentive to derail it. In some states where the Republican governors have endorsed the idea the rank and file Republican state legislatures have worked to kill it, which partially explains why Medicaid expansion has gone so poorly.

I know the statement may seem obvious but the obvious statements in politics are often the most important. This was the point of the 37th Affordable Care Act repeal vote yesterday. According to the roll call vote, every single Republican supported repeal but only two Democrats, Rep. Jim Matheson (UT) and Rep. Mike McIntyre (NC), voted for it. The Democratic Party has been effectively purged of anyone who opposes the law from the right.

For better or worse, during the 2014 election the Democratic Party is effectively all in on Obamacare and the GOP is all in against it. While this was mostly true in both the 2010 and 2012 election, the 2014 election will be very different. In the previous elections the law was just some theoretical future reform. At the best of times, it was a merely an intellectual policy debate about competing predictions. At the worst of times, it was a fight simply over buzzwords.

By November of 2014 the law will have been fully implemented for almost a year. This time it won’t be fight about principles and ideas, but how well a complex law has been actually working. There will literately be millions of people who are better off and worse off because of the law for both parties to highlight. There will be even more people who will finally see that the law has had almost no impact on them personally.

Previously, the GOP was defending the status quo against poorly understood Democratic changes. In 2014 Democrats will be defending a new status quo from the GOP’s vague promises to change it with a “repeal and replace.”

In addition there was actually a chance before the 2012 election that if Republicans won, they could have cleanly repealed the law. Now the Republicans are promising to tear up a huge program after it has been in place for several years. That is a substantially different prospect.

Yesterday, Republicans took a huge bet on the 2014 election that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act will be a train wreck and Democrats took an equally large bet it would be relatively successful. This could end up being the most important event of the 2014 election.

While the Virginia gubernatorial contest remains close, new polling shows Democrat Terry McAuliffe with an edge over Republican LT Gov. Ken Cuccinelli. A new Quinnipiac poll has McAuliffe at 43 percent among registered voter and Cuccinelli at 38 percent. McAuliffe’s standing in the poll has improved modestly since March when the same poll found Cuccinelli with a two point lead.

It is still early in the race and the contest remains fluid. Both candidates technically have slightly positive favorability ratings, but that could easily change. Neither candidate’s very well known and a very large share of the electorate has yet to form an opinion about the candidates. The poll found 60 percent haven’t heard enough about McAuliffe to form an opinion about him while 42 percent say they don’t know enough about Cuccinelli.

A recent Marist poll also found McAuliffe with a small lead among register voters, but had Cuccinelli slightly ahead among likely voters when leaners were included.